


hold to illusions

by Izzerslololol



Series: Mereel and the Galaxy [11]
Category: Star Wars Legends: Republic Commando Series - Karen Traviss
Genre: Clone Wars, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 10:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10660278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzerslololol/pseuds/Izzerslololol
Summary: How does ARC Lieutenant Null-7, Mereel Skirata, answer the question: "When do you lose hope?"





	hold to illusions

Forty seconds to the drop and survival chance updates to less than ten percent. Pilot—Spinner—guns the accelerator, despite or in spite of it, and hooks the wings just _so_ to send us into a tailspin.

Breach atmo and oxygen runs high in overtime—suits’ overworked and no break between for repairs.

You want to know when I lose hope?

That’s a good question.

We hit the second cloud cover and the paint strips instant before the emergency sec-fields trigger. Metal bursts open and I think _hey, this is the minute before I die._

The message doesn’t break through the static of the outer cloud level and Ordo’s never going to know what I said.

No one has to know, _burc’ya_.

But it _is_ a good question.

The acid hits the transport and there’s flashes in time with silence and turbulence. Four times shot at and Spinner laughs and laughs.

Fifth shot takes the transparisteel windscreen and he laughs out the shattered remains of the pilot console—with Fours and Tether.

Somewhere I hear someone who sounds like me: Mayday mayday mayday.

Blood dissipates in puffed red dust to the acidic atmosphere, and our armor is good but it’s not that good. Spiraling out our descent to the dirt below the acid cover and fire rains overhead.

My voice and: Brace brace brace.

Temper’s harness shook loose and he _bounces_ out the open window where Spinner used to be, and I can hear the _crack_ over the comms and the dead’s helmet-cam trained at the yellow sky.

The op proceeds as planned and there’s nothing else to be said.

That’s what I want to say.

We lose people every day. It’s different when it’s under the illusion of your control. Illusion, key word.

But I can’t speak for everyone. Just for me.

Every brother dead is a killing cut to a part of me. And I keep walking, through the acid storms and the dust devils and the blood in the ventilation systems and one man left beside me and he looks at me.

And he laughs and eats his blaster when we win.

When did I lose hope?

I lied. Ordo did receive my message, and he made sure to be there to pick me up on delivery—with a fresh slice of uj and a greasy breakfast to go, even at twenty-one hundred hours on Coruscant.

There’s no single moment I can pinpoint to say “this is the moment where all hope was lost,” but there will always be the handful of moments after, brief, simple, that let me level out before all hope is lost again. And again.

But the truth is, hope is an illusion, and I fake it real well.

**Author's Note:**

> He doesn't really answer the question ... but, then again, that's just how Mereel is. When, exactly, does he answer questions directly and truthfully?
> 
> Few and far in between, and almost never the serious ones.


End file.
